by Westcliffe01 » Sun Dec 01, 2013 11:26 am
Stacie, the 2 hearted river area has changed a lot in the past few years. There used to be a year round outfitter there, Rainbow Lodge, but it was destroyed by fire a couple of years ago. On my last visit this last summer, I found that all the signs that Rainbow lodge had put up (apparently 99% of the signs) had been taken down. My wife and I decided to take a ride to the former Rainbow lodge location to see what had become of it and left the state park at about 4pm, plenty of time we thought....
Due to the disappearance of the signs, we could not find the site and finally went to the very isolated lighthouse (Crisp Point Lighthouse) for some sunset pics. We did find the lighthouse since it seems to be the only thing that had signs pointing to it... Got there just before sunset, took some pictures then it started getting dark. Returning to the campsite we somewhere made a wrong turn and got lost. The GPS was routing us down ORV trails, we discovered that when the markers were only inches wider than the truck. The 2 hearted river has a gorge and if you end up on the wrong side of it (North Side) it is very hard to find your way out, since all roads/trails leading south peter out before they plunge down into the gorge. There is also a lot of thick sand and slopes, so a normal car would have long been stuck. There was no cell phone service either.. The area does have black bear and wolves...
We did finally find our way out by a total fluke and got back to the campsite just before 11pm pretty drained.. If venturing out in that area, I STRONGLY recommend a GPS that has a "track" feature, so you can see where you have been. That way, if you do get lost, you can back track. I was using a fairly expensive Garmin automotive type GPS and in their wisdom, they got rid of the track feature. If the weather had been different, it could easily have turned into a life threatening situation. In the days that Rainbow Lodge was active, one would potentially have been discovered by trail riders the following morning, but now that all of that business and also the gas station that they ran no longer being there, it is hard to say how long it could be before someone happened by.
I have heard of "death by GPS" but I was amazed how easily one could get yourself into quite a spot in an area one thought we were quite familiar with. I also have to think what the heck the people were thinking when they took down all the signs ??? Removing the signs has made navigation considerably more difficult compared to how it used to be.
It is a nice part of the country, but when traveling alone, please take proper precautions...
Last edited by
Westcliffe01 on Sun Dec 01, 2013 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.